


The End of a Century

by whatthefoucault



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: 20th Century, Artificial Intelligence, Baking, Becca Barnes - Freeform, Brooklyn, Canon-Typical Violence, College, Cooking, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/F, F/M, Family, Hospitals, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, New York City, Nightmares, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pregnancy, Recovery, Sexual Content, Slice of Life, Stucky Big Bang 2017, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-16 21:16:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11837214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatthefoucault/pseuds/whatthefoucault
Summary: This is the story of a sister and her brother.As the shadow of the war fades and gives way to new conflicts, Becca Barnes battles the constraints of the twentieth century: an education, a marriage, a career, with the ghosts of her youth never far from her memory.  As the twenty-first century barrels on through its awkward teenage phase, Bucky Barnes builds a new life, with new friends, and a burgeoning relationship with his lifelong companion Steve, the erstwhile Captain America, as they struggle to find their place in the world.The last time Becca saw her brother was on the eve of war; neither of them expected, some seventy-something years, a hip replacement, and one new arm later, to be reunited.This is a story about family.





	The End of a Century

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Stucky Big Bang 2017, with drawings by the incredible [samthebirdbae](http://samthebirdbae.tumblr.com) and moodboard by the brilliant [blue-pointer](http://blue-pointer.tumblr.com).
> 
> The title comes from "Century" by Feist, which is on the story's [soundtrack, which you can listen to here.](https://open.spotify.com/user/samikelsh/playlist/3vcTpylDtpfyPt31Vdj31k)

_1950_

Midday was predictably busy in the tasteful Midtown cafe, and there sat Becca Barnes, peering out over thick-rimmed glasses perched precariously on the end of her nose. Peggy Carter, on the other hand, was genuine class, chestnut hair falling just about her shoulders in elegant waves, and her lipstick was flawless.

"Thank you for meeting with me." She smiled at Becca, stirring a gentle pour of milk into her tea. "This is what I wanted to give you."

She removed a large, overstuffed file from her handbag, and handed it across the table, careful not to let it fall into the slices of rhubarb pie that sat between them.

"Most of this belonged to your brother," she continued. Becca turned the file over in her hands. "Letters, a few photos, that sort of thing, correspondence between Sergeant Barnes and Captain Rogers. Some of Steve's sketches as well."

Becca allowed herself a sad smile. "He was always drawing," she said.

"Technically, Steve had his next of kin down as your brother, but..." Peggy gave herself a moment. "We both know how that turned out."

Little Stevie Rogers had been Bucky's best friend since at least as far back as Becca could remember: even before they moved in together, one was more often than not sleeping over at the other's place, and their mother had never minded an extra mouth to feed at the table. After all, Rogers was nothing but skin and bones, as Mom regularly tutted at him while piling on an extra helping of chopped liver - or, on special occasions, a nice, slow cooked brisket. Becca remembered him mostly as always kind, never condescending, and always looked a bit like a grade school kid wearing his dad's jacket.

She brushed back a tumble of unruly dark curls that threatened to fall over her face, and scrunched her cardigan's sleeves to her elbows. "Okay," she said. "Let's take a look."

Peggy sipped her tea.

The first piece was a small photograph; slightly out of focus, but unmistakably Becca's brother. He seemed smaller than she remembered, but then little Stevie had undergone a growth spurt by comparison. They had their arms slung amiably about each other's shoulders, laughing and happy and full of life. It seemed almost strange to look at now: her brother had always seemed so much older than she was, so independent and grown-up, but Becca was now about the age Bucky and Steve would have been when the photo was taken, and with the benefit of hindsight and distance and age, she now understood how much of his confidence was a veneer concealing a barely-contained vulnerability.

Becca set the folder down. "Yep, that's my brother," she said, drawing a heavy puff of breath to keep her voice from wavering with the unexpected tide of emotion.

"You don't have to go through all of it now," Peggy told her. "It belongs with you."

Becca shook her head. "I'm all right, I'm sorry," she said. "Thank you."

Steve had always had a talent for art: if he had applied himself to it the way he applied himself to getting into scrapes, he could have licked Norman Rockwell at his own game. The first few pages were largely architectural: meticulously cross-hatched street corners, laundry hanging from fire escapes, scenes and people she recognised from the neighbourhood. Then there were other people, faces she did not recognise; army friends, she supposed. The next page was unexpected. Becca blushed.

She could see why Peggy had contacted her, and not her mother.

"So you've seen..." Becca gestured uselessly at the stack of papers on the table.

Peggy cleared her throat. "Steve had a very good eye for composition and form," she said, as diplomatically as she could. "It's a shame more people never got to know that about him."

Objectively, there was nothing in the drawings that she might not have seen in any fine art gallery, but those figures were characters from antiquity, unnamed muses, people she did not know. This was _Bucky_ , and something in the ease of his expression betrayed such a gentle intimacy that she felt privy to a side of her brother's life that was meant for no one but himself... and Steve, apparently.

"Listen, Miss... Agent... umm, what should I call you?" asked Becca.

"Peggy's fine," she smiled.

Becca nodded. "Okay, Peggy," she said, "can I ask you a bit of a personal question?"

"Yes, of course," said Peggy, "assuming it isn't classified."

"You and Steve were close," she continued. "The newspapers sure made it sound like you were pretty sweet on each other."

"He was supposed to take me dancing." Peggy's smile was wistful. Becca noticed the subtle pink half-moon of lipstick that hung from the rim of her teacup.

"I was practically still a kid when my brother was drafted," Becca told her. "He was a lot older than me, but we were always pretty close, you know? It's kinda funny, thinking there's this whole part of his life that I just... missed."

"I'm so sorry." Peggy carefully speared a small pebble of pie crust with her fork.

"When I was probably about nine or ten," she recalled, slowly drawing circles through the coffee with her spoon, clink clink clinking against the sides of the little cup, "not long after Mrs. Rogers passed, and my brother and Stevie got their own little place together, I remember my mom and I sorting through old jewelry, looking for anything we could try to sell, to put away a little money to give to them as a housewarming gift. She had this ring; it was small, sure, but an elegant design. Nothing too expensive, you know. She said it was her engagement ring when she married Dad, said she was saving it to give to Bucky when he met a girl he wanted to marry. But I was so confused! I said, 'but I thought him and Steve were getting married!' It seemed the simplest thing in the world to me."

Peggy's eyes widened a good two sizes. "Dare I ask what your mother said?"

"She laughed," said Becca, and could not contain her smile at the memory. "Oh, she just laughed."

"It was obvious how much they meant to each other," said Peggy, pressing the tines of her fork through the crisp, crimped pastry along the outer edge of her slice of pie. "I think they were both very lucky to have found each other. In hindsight, I wonder... no, I wouldn't dare speculate when neither are here to comment."

"If Mom suspected, she never said," Becca shrugged. "But then, why would she? He was happy, so she was happy for him. And then... he was a war hero."

"Becca, I'm so sorry," she said, grasping Becca's hands in hers. "Your brother was a very good, brave man."

"I know." The funny thing about the loss of someone who had been such a constant for so much of one's life was that it left one in a constant state of remembering. Sometimes, she would be making ovaltine, or riding the subway across town, or writing an exam, and it would just occur to her again. Oh yeah, Bucky is dead. It always felt as strange as the first time, like something had gone slightly off with the universe.

She would see Peggy for the next time a few weeks later: a chance encounter buying gravlax on the Lower East Side, where Peggy was sharing a bagel with an elegant woman she introduced as her girlfriend, Angie.

Becca recognised the strange emphasis she had placed on the word, girlfriend: the momentary pause, the care and consideration with which she spoke. Most, she suspected, would not have noticed, but Peggy was nothing if not an excellent judge of character; so much so, it seemed, that she had recognised in Becca the kind of kindred spirit worth being a friend to.

_2018_

There were still things that lay just beyond where Bucky's memory could reach: his therapist, quite wisely he thought, suggested he focus on the things he could remember, and let the gaps fill themselves. Memory was, by its very nature, fragmentary and changing, she was apt to remind him, but the mind was also resilient in ways we still did not fully understand. In that sense, he supposed, we were all always something of a mystery even to ourselves. The idea was almost comforting, if only in the knowledge that he was perhaps less broken than he thought.

He remembered home, before the war. He remembered his mother, strong and warm, and his father, terse, always busy, almost distant, but kind. He remembered his kid sister; a serious child and an earnest young woman, her studious nature betrayed by the sheer volume of her wild hair, untamed and untamable. What will the other mothers think, Mom would lament as she attempted in vain to scrape Becca's hair into some semblance of an appropriately feminine hairstyle, which it inevitably resisted in no uncertain terms, best left to its own devices. Becca would shrug her shoulders, pull up her socks, tuck her books under her arm, and march to school, shoulders down and head held high like a goddamn queen.

He remembered Steve, young and passionate and so much more beautiful than he knew, loose flannel shirtsleeves turned up to his elbows, the occasional freckle dotting his pale forearms. Steve was taller now, but the freckles were still the same. Everything that mattered was.

He remembered he was meant to be freshening up before breakfast. He squinted into the mirror at his still sleep-softened face.

"Hey Steve," he shouted across to the bedroom.

"Yeah?"

"Could you check the back of my shoulder to see if I've used enough metal polish?"

_1933_

Bucky had managed to convince their mother that going to see a show was a worthwhile educational experience - after all, he was going to write a paper about it for class. Mom had agreed, as long as he and Steve took Becca with them. But she's only six, Becca had overheard him arguing, as if she were some kind of feral child, and not the smart and sophisticated young lady she surely was. But she would only get bored, he argued - but if it was so boring, why did Bucky and Steve want to go, she wondered. No buts, their mother had told him, and so the trio traveled to the theatre together, to see a play about robots.

Becca was entranced.

"What's the playwright's name?" she asked them on the way out of the theatre.

"Čapek," said Bucky. He held onto her hand for safety as they filtered out into the street along with the other theatregoers, his other arm slung around Steve's shoulder. Becca hoped she would meet a best friend like Steve one day.

"How do you spell it?"

"Uhh, C, A, P, uhh - jeez, I dunno, who cares?" Bucky was used to Becca's many questions, but this did not mean he always felt like answering them.

"I want to see if the library has the book," she explained, smiling. "And I want to learn how to make real robots."

"But... they killed all the humans," countered Bucky.

"I know, but if the humans had just been nice to them to begin with, they wouldn't have had to kill them," she reasoned. She could tell that Steve was trying not to giggle.

"You got me there, kiddo," Bucky sighed, shrugging his shoulders in resignation.

Steve ate with them that night; they had toasted ham and cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, so Mom could leave the dishes to the boys while she and Dad went to look in on Mrs. Petrie, who had a terrible fall the week before, but whose son moved to Florida. Steve quietly worked in his sketchbook while Becca tried to work out how she would go about designing a robot. The boys had agreed that Bucky would wash and Steve would dry, so Bucky stood at the sink, singing as he went, and making an absolute racket.

"I know that I'm in looooove," he crooned to himself as he scoured the frying pan. "The sky is always blue, no matter what I do, and if you love me tooooo - "

"Bucky, are you sweet on a girl?" Becca interrupted him, feeling especially mischievous. "What's her name? Do you wanna kiss her?"

"Aww, knock it off, you little creep," protested Bucky, swatting at her with a dirty piece of steel wool. "It's just a goddamn song."

Becca was shocked.

"I'm telling Mom you just said goddamn!" she said.

"I'm telling Mom _you_ just said goddamn," he replied.

He had her there, she thought. It was so unfair. But then, eureka:

"I'm telling Mom you said it twice!"

_2018_

"So what do you want for dinner tonight?" Bucky asked, little more than a muffled hum as he dragged his lips over Steve's skin, soft and strong.

"Oh, I don't care." Steve drew him in closer, hands resting across the small of his back. "Are you seriously thinking about dinner at a time like this?"

"Just planning ahead," grinned Bucky, nudging his knee between Steve's legs. "Wondering whether I'm gonna need to go to the supermarket."

Steve's response was the smallest, quietest gasp. Steve was so quiet when they made love: little whispers, sighs, sometimes a giggle. Bucky treasured them all.

For so long, Bucky had barely allowed himself to dream that they would share such a dialogue.

Dinner plans would wait. Bucky could feel Steve growing hard against his leg, and his heart swelled with the warmth of gratitude.

Bucky helped Steve shimmy out of his briefs - so much softer and more comfortable than anything they had worn before the war, and these days, Steve favoured darker colours, grey or red, or sometimes stripes. Bucky kicked his snug black trunks to the foot of the bed.

He could feel Steve blushing, face buried in his shoulder.

"You all right there, punk?" he asked. Steve nodded.

"We're making love," giggled Steve, breathless. "This should be weird."

Bucky went still. It had been months, but a little doubt still sat in his mind, planted cross-legged and unmoving, and every once in a while, it liked to shout at him. Steve was just being kind, somehow it was all a very long dream, somehow, and soon, it would end.

"Steve," he hated to have to ask the question, "is this weird?"

Steve's hand brushed over him very deliberately. Bucky's doubts dissipated like vapour trails.

"It's very not weird," said Steve. "Maybe we should have started sooner, if you wanted to back then."

Bucky shook his head. What a meatball. "Buddy, I've loved you since we were teenagers."

"Why didn't you say?" The question seemed so simple when Steve asked him, such an earnest query with such a complicated answer. Bucky drew a long breath.

"I was afraid." It was not an easy confession, and felt almost silly against the warm and comforting rhythm of Steve's heartbeat.

"Afraid of what, Buck?"

"What would I have done if you weren't interested?" he asked. "I remember the exact moment I fell in love with you. It was an awakening. I didn't understand how it could be dangerous, when it felt so beautiful. But I don't know what I'd have done with myself if you'd gotten mad, or if you thought I was pulling your leg, or if you just... I don't know, didn't want to see me anymore. Why didn't you say?"

Steve rolled onto his side, propped on his elbows. He cast his gaze to the ceiling, as though the wash of slightly uneven white plaster held the answer. "I guess it took my head a while to catch up with my heart, that's all."

"You're a real pain the backside sometimes, Rogers," Bucky smiled, rolling onto his back.

"Hey, I thought you liked it when I got handsy," pouted Steve, with the least convincing of mock indignation.

"Never said it was a bad thing."

To say they had time to make up for was an understatement. For years, first when they were still at school, then later in their little apartment, Bucky had had plenty of time to rehearse - in his imagination, at least. When he allowed his mind to wander, he could imagine his lips pressing softly over Steve's skin, taking in that gentle fragrance of Williams' shaving soap and pencil dust that was so much Steve. He could imagine the way Steve's little gasps and sighs and whispered swears would sound, and the way Steve's hands would feel raking under Bucky's shirt, warm and so much stronger than he knew.

"Buck, I know that look, and I don't want to hear it," Steve would assert, frowning at what Bucky supposed he thought was a different sort of scrutiny, and Bucky's heart would sink into the cold wooden floor. He could never say how long he had been daydreaming. "Every time we go to your mother's house, she's onto me about how she's seen baby birds with more meat on their bones, and then she's onto you about how you're not feeding me enough red meat."

"That's not what I was looking at you for," Bucky would tell him, dropping his gaze to the floorboards. "You know I know how much you can eat. God only knows how you manage to burn through it all. Hell, you're gonna eat us out of house and home, punk."

"Yeah yeah, wise guy," Steve would say, slinging his crumpled workshirt squarely at Bucky's head.

It would be years before Bucky made it properly clear what he saw when he looked at Steve, but even then, no words had passed between them. No amount of dreaming could have prepared him for the flood of emotion that came with the heart opening, vulnerable and afraid, and being rewarded with a gift of love in return. He could have stayed forever in that little bed, listening to Steve's soft, steady heartbeats, but the draft had had other plans for him.

It would be decades before they would lay together for a second time, but this time, it was soon followed by a third, and a fourth, and eventually, Bucky had stopped counting altogether. Every once in a while, he would catch himself watching Steve quietly at work or at rest, and remember.

"What?" Steve scowled, having noticed him looking. "Is there something in my teeth?"

"I'm so in love with you," Bucky told him.

_1942_

"I'm telling you, he's a queer."

Hattie was one of those girls - precocious was the word for it - who acted like they knew everything about everybody's business even better than anybody knew themselves. She was two years older than Becca, as she was apt to point out - as though two lousy years made a lick of difference in the grand scheme of things. She sucked the last of that thick milkshake through her straw without a single thought for anyone's objection to the loud, echoing gurgle. She always wore her thick hair plaited into two tight braids that rested gracefully just over her shoulders.

"Since when do you know anything about queers?" asked Becca.

"Look, I know it's difficult to hear, seeing how he's your brother and all, Bec," Hattie continued, patting Becca's shoulder in sympathy, "but a fella like that could've had any girl in the neighbourhood ten times over, and what's he go and do? He goes and gets an apartment with that little pipsqueak friend of his. If you ask me, I'd say there's more to those two than meets the eye."

Becca stirred her straw in her soda, watching the little bubbles rise and pop to the surface in an effort to suppress her annoyance. So what if he was queer? What business was it of Hattie's, or anybody else? It was nobody's business but his own, she thought, and Steve's, if they were.

Besides, Becca liked Steve. His shirts were always too big and his hair was always a mess, like a deceptively small tornado. He had been a presence in the Barnes household for nearly as long as Becca could remember: even before they moved into their own little home, it was rare that Bucky was seen without Steve, either poring over a book together on the living room rug, or making hasty apologies to Mom before dashing back to Mrs. Rogers' house to surprise her with grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup when she came home from the ward. They always seemed terribly grown up to Becca, especially now that they had actual jobs and an actual apartment and probably made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup as often as they pleased.

"You know what?" she said, setting her empty glass down with a thump, as she leapt down from the high barstool. "I don't care if they're queers. I don't care if they go out every night and dance the samba with fruit baskets for hats. I don't know if they are or not, but it's none of your goddamn business and I think it's real rotten of you to act like it is."

"All right, already, I'm just trying to spare you some heartache."

Becca never did find out whether Hattie was right, for it was not long at all before Bucky received his orders and bid Brooklyn farewell; indeed, after her brother died, and little Steve went tumbling after - it had always been so impossible to imagine one of them without the other that their reunion would have been something of a comfort, had Becca any genuine faith in anything beyond the world of the living - the question was neither relevant nor appropriate, and as such was more or less laid to rest with her brother and his best friend.

_2018_

Bucky liked the local markets near the apartment he shared with Steve: lanes of stalls were shaded by trees, laden with bright fruit and vegetables, heavy baskets of peaches and plums, bunches of dark beetroots still dusty from the earth they were pulled from, fresh herbs of every description, abundant stalks of blushing rhubarb. He picked his way through the stalls, selecting what he hoped would not be more fruit than he and Steve could manage to eat in the next few days, and a few sweet potatoes, onions, and bright pretty greens for dinner; eggs, milk, and yoghurt from the local dairy, then stopping in at the little cafe over the road before walking his shopping back to the apartment, where Steve was probably cleaning the kitchen, or writing a polite but firmly-worded response to a news article he found on Twitter.

Whoever introduced Steve to Twitter (Bucky suspects it was probably Sam) had a lot to answer for. Steve had so relentlessly good, so unflappable in his belief in the importance of standing up for what was right, but some fights were simply not worth wasting so many as a hundred and forty characters on.

Their neighbourhood was so different from the Brooklyn he remembered. On bad days (which, thankfully, were growing fewer and farther between) it gave him pause to question whether he remembered the old neighbourhood correctly at all; on good days, however, it was vibrant and green, quiet at night, and they had found enough little landmarks scattered here and there - a diner that still served egg creams just the way Steve liked them, a family bakery that had been there at least since they were children - to remind them that they were home.

The coffee shop was one of those international franchise-types that were ubiquitous and unavoidable these days, it seemed, and some of the baristas seemed to struggle mightily with his name (there was one unusually friendly young woman who would absolutely not be dissuaded from her belief that his name was Duckie) but the coffee was still light-years better than any of the muck they used to serve in the automats back in the day, and for this, Bucky was grateful.

"Yeah, uhh, can I just get a... small, iced caramel latte please?" he asked, with a polite smile.

"Iced caramel latte," the barista repeated back to him with the flat tone of someone who probably just wanted to go home, scribbling in permanent marker across the plastic cup. He would make a note to tip generously. These people were providing an essential service to the community. "Can I take a name for the order?"

"It's Bucky," he said, as clearly as he could. "With a B. Bucky."

He settled his order quickly and quietly, and shuffled to the end of the bar to await his drink.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that the man sitting alone at the tall table by the door was staring at him. He turned away, feigning casual interest in a display of blonde roast coffee beans, fingertips poised over the container of plastic cutlery.

"Hey, hey," he heard the man say, but hoped the man was trying to get someone else's attention.

He bristled at the tap on his shoulder, his hand curling into a tight fist.

"No, no, no, no, no," protested the man, gesticulating erratically. "I, I, I'm not drunk enough for this, man."

"What do you want?" asked Bucky, surveying the room as best he could. He would have to push past the man to get to the nearest exit, but at least none of the other patrons seemed to be involved.

He had been expecting a fight, but the man seemed bewildered.

"You know, I wrote it all off as conspiracy theories when they talked about you on the news, but there you are! It's, you're you, aren't you," said the man. "Uhh, hi, Great Uncle Bucky?"

Great Uncle Bucky, the man had said, with a wave hello so awkward it was little more than a twitch. The man was wearing a messy beard and a red sweatshirt which, if Bucky was any judge at all of these things (and he was), it looked like he had probably slept in. Bucky recognised in him the slightly wild-eyed countenance of someone who was used to relying on caffeine as a means of maintaining a basic semblance of human function.

"I think you've got me confused with somebody else," he told the man in no uncertain terms, pulling his ballcap down, ready to bolt for the door.

"Iced caramel latte for Bucky?" called out the barista, sliding the drink toward him. Fuck. He was fucked.

"Fuck," he muttered. "Look, I don't want any trouble."

"No, no, no, what the fuck?" exclaimed the man. "I'm trying to tell you I'm your... great... nephew - I did not expect you to be a caramel latte kinda guy."

Bucky glanced down at his drink and shrugged.

"Why do you keep calling yourself my - "

"Great nephew, yeah," said the man. "George. Your sister Becca is my grandma."

Becca, the man had said. Two syllables, and everything stopped.

"Becca?"

"Yeah," said George, with a soft smile. "Her maiden name was Barnes?"

The last time Bucky had seen his sister was just before he departed for his military service. She was wearing grey slacks and a blue sweater that day. He could not remember what they talked about, or whether his parents were there, but he could remember the way her glasses sat almost comically askew atop her head, nearly buried among her mess of dark curls. They shared a soft challah roll and the sky was cloudy.

It had not occurred to him that anyone from so long ago was still alive.

"Shit, man, I guess there's a lot you've gotta catch up on," shrugged George. "I, I, I don't know if I'm the best person to do it."

It could have been an elaborate ruse of some sort, but on whose part, Bucky struggled to imagine. It was not as though there were not plenty of forces at large in the world who may have felt they had good reason to hurt him, but surely those forces would have sent a more wholesome ersatz family member.

Regardless, the risk was not so great as to outweigh the possibility that this man, improbable as it may have been, was family.

"Okay, but let's talk," Bucky told him, leading them out of the café.

_1946_

"You're lucky you're not doing poetry, Bec," said Prudence, half leaning out of the window, watching vigilantly for tattle-tales as she carefully puffed a trail of smoke quickly into the air, dissipating it with a frantic wave of her hand as she went.

Prudence was rarely seen wearing anything other than a turtleneck sweater, and a pair of slacks cuffed up like she was digging for clams. The room they shared was small - two beds, a couple of bookshelves, a desk, a few potted plants in the window - but served them well enough. Becca looked on from her bed, propped up on her elbows.

"I thought you said poetry was the greatest of all intellectual pursuits," puzzled Becca. 

"Not when Zimmerman's got anything to say about it," she sighed, ashing the last of her cigarette against the outside wall, and hopping back into the room. "As windbags go, he's a goddamn hot air balloon. And he's the kind of guy who looks at you like he's trying to guess your bra size. It's rotten."

Becca heaved at the thought. Prudence fixed her hair into a low ponytail, collapsing backwards across Becca's pillow.

"Have you ever considered a career in mathematics and computing?" suggested Becca. "I'm not saying there aren't windbags, but..."

"Do you ever feel like most of the men you meet at college are glad to find out you're smart, not because they're interested in your ideas, but in having a chick they can explain their ideas to?"

Becca snorted. "Such fragile intellectual egos," she agreed. "Heaven forbid a girl be at least as talented as he is."

Prudence's arm draped heavily across Becca's shoulders, slender fingers tangling in her unruly curls. "Your hair is really something," she said.

"It's always been ill-behaved," replied Becca, shrugging her off.

"And all the better for it," Prudence smiled.

It was the first time Becca had ever been kissed. She had scarcely had time to give it thought before then; after all, she had always been content in the knowledge that she was by no means the sort of pretty young bouquet of flowers that boys tended to go for when she was younger, but then, she had had better things with which to occupy herself. But Prudence was soft, and smiled as their lips pressed together with a giggle, the trace of cigarettes and lousy coffee lingering between them.

The first time they lay together was effervescent. It was all too fast and too overridden by enthusiasm and the purity of relative youth to allow for the uncertainty she would find in her later encounters. She could feel the light pouring out of her: fingertips twinkling, her skin aglow, even her breath was luminescent, and stardust multiplied in her belly until it burst like the birth of a new sun.

But if Becca was the sun, then Prudence was the earth, blooming against Becca's tongue like jasmine in the night, graceful and dark, until she was coming in peals of laughter, hoarse and joyfully exhausted, and they fell into the tiny bed together and all was still again.

And so it went from then on, with cigarettes and coffee and terrible breakfasts, about town with Prudence and Prudence's friends, like Lucien and Robert and Max, who became Becca's friends too; secretly holding hands beneath the table in diners and giggling together about the world and love, so exuberant and so new. Becca found she had little interest in poetry, but poets made for the best company. So it went from then on, until her two worlds both saw fit to crumble all at once, leaving her to dig her way out of the detritus, her knuckles worn bloody and raw, lungs coated with dust, broken but rebuilding.

The sun was shining the day Becca's father died. She and Prudence had made plans to get hot dogs and take their books to the park, to read together beneath the trees.

It was not until she had moved away that Becca recognised fully how much of a mystery her father was to her: not distant, not exactly, not absent, but always busy. Mom had said, in hindsight, that he had never quite been the same after Bucky was lost to the war, but this was never something Becca had been allowed to see. She supposed that unfailing stoicism was his way of protecting his children.

The funeral was small: Becca and her mother, a few of the men he had worked with, Aunt Ida in her Sunday best. When she was young, Becca had always held the tacit assumption that Aunt Ida was someone's sister, Mom's or Dad's, but since her actual relation to the family (if there was one at all) was never made clear, it seemed impolite to ask. She brought a casserole.

Becca moved out of the dorms so her mother would not be alone. Mom had insisted, of course, that she would be just fine on her own, and that Becca's studies should always come first, but Becca did not take long to adjust to life as a day student, and she could see that it would not have done to leave her mother on her own. In many ways, Becca had long since become used to being an only child: she was ten when Bucky had moved into that little apartment with little Steve Rogers and, apart from the usual Sunday dinner, it was just her and the folks. But then the war came and the Sunday dinners with Bucky and Steve gave way to uneasily waiting for letters which rarely came, and news reports that felt decidedly incomplete. Perhaps, she thought, she needed to stay close to the family she had as much as her mother did. Most days, Becca's mother went about her day with the sort of stoic cheer that Becca supposed one had to in the face unspeakable sorrows. Once, it seemed as though her mother was trying to tell her it felt like a betrayal to give herself over to such grief for a husband and a son when so many of their people had died in Europe.

Becca felt as though the human heart was not built to understand loss on such a scale.

It would be two weeks before Becca saw Prudence again, occupied with the endless boring business of grief and exams and housekeeping with mother. She was quieter than usual; Becca's former bookshelves were still empty, but Prudence's own were looking oddly spartan as well.

"My mom lost her job," she said, staring out into the nothing out of the window, cigarette twitching between her fingertips. "I don't have to drop out of school, but I've gotta transfer back to San Francisco."

Becca felt the breath punched from her lungs like a cinder block stamping the last gasp of air from a sad little balloon.

"Oh," was as much as she could manage to say.

"Hey, it's not like we can never visit," said Prudence, resting a hand over Becca's wrist. "And we can write letters. It'll be romantic."

"Sure it will," Becca agreed, but there was only sadness and contrition in Prudence's dark eyes. It was a promise people made, usually with the very best of intentions, but it was clear that whatever they two had been would not survive that many state lines, and they both knew it. Out in the square, five pigeons fought over a hard crust of bread.

Becca wrote her one letter, and received none in return. Life marched on.

_2018_

Bucky barely had the front door open before Steve was grasping at fistfuls of Bucky's soft flannel shirt, dragging him into a warm embrace. Bucky let his shopping slip gently to the floor. It was good to be home.

"Missed you," Steve smiled against his lips. He had been drinking coffee.

"I was only gone an hour," he blushed.

"I know, but I missed you anyway," Steve mumbled into his shoulder. 

"Missed you too," said Bucky. Steve's hands drifted downwards, coming to rest in the back pockets of Bucky's jeans. 

From somewhere behind them in the corridor came the sound of a very deliberate cough. Shit, George, thought Bucky.

"Manners, punk," Bucky flustered in spite of himself, suddenly aware that they had an audience. "We've got company. This is apparently my great nephew, George."

"Hey," said George, poking into view with an awkward wave.

"Uhh, George, meet your Great Uncle Steve," mumbled Bucky. This was still too weird. Steve was looking to Bucky for answers that Bucky did not have. Bucky was squinting uncomfortably towards George. George regarded them warmly.

"Huh," he said, at long last. "Grandma never mentioned you two were doing it."

"We... that's personal," Bucky blushed. Steve blushed too.

"Listen, I, I, I'd better talk to my mom about having you over to visit Grandma," said George, nervously scrubbing his fingers through his hair. "It's probably not a good idea to just spring a surprise visit on her, you know? Don't get me wrong, she's probably the smartest person I've ever met, but she's old as balls now and you don't want her breaking her hip replacement because she's fainted because she thinks you're a ghost or something."

"Okay," said Bucky, tucking his left hand as far as it would reach into his jacket sleeve.

"Oh shit, you're not a ghost, are you?"

"No, no I'm not a ghost," Bucky told him. Sometimes, on bad days, he could feel so disconnected, from his body or from the world, that he might well have been; other days, however, he was all too aware of how real it all was.

"Oh, thank fuck," George said with a nervous laugh. "I'm not sure I could handle another ghost incident."

"Another ghost - "

"Hey, so if you guys are involved, were you like secretly doing the do down in the trenches in World War I?"

"Ok ok look," protested Steve, "that's not even - how old do you think we are?"

"I dunno," shrugged George. "My grandma's old as fuck, though you'd never know it, and you're older than she is, so..."

"But _we're_ also about the same age," said Bucky.

"I know, man, this is a wild ride," George agreed, handing Bucky his phone. "Here, punch in your number, and I'll text you when I've talked to Mom... uhh, your niece."

"Thanks," Bucky smiled. "It's nice meeting you, George."

"You too, Uncle Bucky," said George.

"Please don't call me uncle," Bucky cringed.

George shrugged again, and saw himself out of the building. Bucky closed the apartment door behind him.

"Buck," Steve said carefully, "what the hell was that?"

"Fucked if I know, punk," Bucky told him, shaking his head. "But... Steve, my kid sister."

"Do you trust this guy?" Steve asked him. It was a good question: there were plenty of good reasons to be suspicious of him, of most people they met. Maybe it was something Bucky wanted to be true enough that someone with bad intentions knew it could be a weakness to be exploited. Maybe he had become too used to being paranoid, and this guy was just a guy who happened to have a grandma who happened to be Becca Barnes.

"I don't know," admitted Bucky. "But... my sister."

Steve closed the space between them, resting his head on Bucky's shoulder as they melted into an embrace.

"I know, Buck."

_1949_

Becca had never been much of one for nightlife, but when in Rome. She was, on the other hand, not one of those science-types who could spend days in the lab without sleep or distraction; rather, it was useful to cultivate some little life outside of talking to computers and teaching them to talk back. Thus, there she was, where too many of them - artists and playwrights and poets mostly, or people who wished they were - were stuffed into the burgundy velvet banquette of the little booth in the back corner of the already overcrowded and altogether too small room, where cool people came to appreciate hot jazz. A saxophonist was improvising with sweaty enthusiasm, and the table were already on their sixth bottle of chianti.

The man sitting next to her - a long, thin thing ostensibly friends with Lucien, though Becca had not seen him at any of their outings before - was cleaning his glasses.

"So, you like jazz?" she shouted to him over the music. He squinted.

"Pardon?"

"I said, do you like jazz?" she repeated, louder, slower. "The music, do you like it?"

"No, it's Eugene!" he shouted back.

"Forget it," she shrugged, taking him by the hand. "Let's just dance!"

"What?"

She stood, leading him out onto the floor. The music was not much to dance to, frenetic and blurry, but neither was Eugene much of a dancer, it turned out. He managed to swing his arms in all directions without moving his shoulders, and his face gave the distinct impression of far too much of a concerted effort being made.

"Are you sure you're all right?" she asked him over the music.

"I don't know! Is this cool?" he asked in response, kicking his legs like a newborn giraffe. This was a mistake.

"Listen, we could go get eggs or something," she suggested. He stopped, perfectly still, in the middle of the dance floor.

"Are you telling me there's somewhere we can get eggs at this hour? Obviously, this is what I would like to be doing."

The eggs were nice. Scrambled, with hash browns and a cup of coffee that tasted like it the pot had been sat warming on that suspicious-looking hotplate behind the counter since 1928. Eugene had his over easy with two slices of brown toast - jam, no butter. He walked her to her door, and said goodnight.

It would be three months before she saw Eugene again, purely by chance, sat in the very back row of her statistics lecture room.

"Stats, huh?" she asked him after class, books tucked under her arm. "I thought you were part of Lucien's crowd. You know, poets and artists and... jazz people."

"I'm studying to be an actuary," he blushed, ducking his head. It seemed such an odd gesture "Sure, the art and music is great, but it's not anything I'm good at. I... I think Lucien thinks it's cool to have a black friend. Gives him credibility, even if I don't know the first thing about bebop."

Becca cringed at that. She had inherited Lucien and company from Prudence, and, for lack of another social circle, kept their company on and off in the intervening years, but it was clear as time moved forward that their interests diverged considerably.

"You need better friends," she suggested, nudging him with her shoulder as they ambled out of the building.

"Are you nominating yourself?" he asked her.

She gave it a moment's thought, regarding him. His shirtsleeves - a faint herringbone twill, in a shade of beige just slightly darker than his baggy chinos - were scrunched to his elbows, he had not shaved in several days, and his hair was perfect.

"An actuary, huh?" she smiled. "I'm into computers."

"Please tell me everything you do with computers," he enthused.

Becca laughed. "That might take a while," she told him. "Maybe we should start with lunch."

_2018_

"I shouldn't have talked to that guy." Bucky was chopping the last of the sweet potato into rough cubes, while the onion softened in the bottom of their heavy pot. "You know we've got a lot of reasons not to trust people..."

"No offense, but if that guy was working for somebody who wanted to hurt us, don't you think they'd have sent someone a little less..." Steve seemed to struggle to find the right word.

"Shifty?" offered Bucky, tipping the sweet potato into the pot, along with the chickpeas.

"Yeah," shrugged Steve. "I didn't want to say. He's family, I guess. He seems nice."

"Yeah." Bucky had not let himself consider that he might have family. It felt surreal - if surreal was the right word - to have a great nephew that was the same age he was. Possibly slightly older. He dropped a cinnamon stick into the pot, along with a few good shakes of ground cumin. There was an ingredient missing, but his mind could not place what it was. He scratched idly at his left arm. He had added cinnamon, coriander seed, cumin seed, a bay leaf? No, there were no bay leaves. Vegetable stock, ginger, garlic...

"Hey Buck... how does it itch?" Steve asked him, pulling him out of his mental ingredients list.

Bucky stopped what he was doing, upturned his flesh palm, and glanced at his metal forearm. Every once in a while, Bucky caught himself scratching it by reflex: the itch, whether real or imagined, felt as present as an itch in his flesh arm, and the longer he attempted to ignore it, the more irritating it became.

"Beats me," he shrugged, "but it itches. Mostly it means I have to keep a tub of moisturiser and a tub of metal polish in the bathroom cabinet. Does it - "

Bucky did not know how to finish the question. Does it scare you? But this was not the first time Steve had held this hand, with just as much fondness as he held the other.

"Does it hurt?" asked Steve, tracing the lines of the metal palm with his fingertips. Bucky's fingers bowed inward, in response to the touch. Bucky could not say if Steve had wondered before, but it was the first time Steve had let himself ask.

"Sometimes, but it's strong, you know. It's wired into my nervous system. So I can stop bullets with this thing," he patted his forearm, "and it hurts like a bitch, but not as bad as being shot anywhere else."

"That's good." Steve set Bucky's hand back down.

"But on the other hand," said Bucky, the backs of his fingers brushing over Steve's cheek, "I can tell you skipped shaving this morning."

Steve blushed. "Is that a critique?"

Bucky shook his head. "Just an observation," he said. "You know I think a beard suits you."

"Oh yeah?" Steve's grin was laced with such a mischievous want that Bucky felt himself blushing too. What a couple of goddamn beetroots they were, he thought.

"Yeah, well," he replied, "don't let it go to your head."

He closed the gap between them, just enough that their lips met, softly and slowly. His fingertips tangled their way into Steve's hair, but then - apricots, goddamn. It was apricots.

"Apricots!" he exclaimed, his hands clenching into tight fists in frustration at having forgotten. "So stupid, so stupid, why can't I just - "

"Buck, it's normal to forget stuff," said Steve, taking Bucky's hands in his own. "Everybody does. It doesn't mean... it doesn't mean anything bad."

Bucky knew this; objectively, he knew it was normal and he knew he was okay and he knew every day he was getting better. He knew, but still. He nodded quietly, and tumbled a handful of apricots into the pot, to let their sweetness sink down and out into the fragrant stew.

_1951_

It was, it turned out, much easier to date without drawing attention to oneself whilst living in residence than it was as a day student. As such, Becca's mother asked, quite regularly, when that nice Eugene fellow was coming around for dinner.

Not wanting to succumb to a terrifying maternal interrogation - who is this boy, what are his intentions, does he have a good job - Becca preferred to slip little pieces of information to her mother as the months went on: he's an actuary, he likes a good screwball comedy, he grew up in Brooklyn, and he's half Jewish on his dad's side. And his mom is black.

She had had no way of guessing whether the last detail would land like a lead balloon or be fine. It was not as though they lived in one of those little towns in other parts of the country where everyone looked the same and had scarcely ever seen anyone who was not an English-speaking white American: this was New York City, the most cosmopolitan place in the country, and Becca's mother was friends or friendly with nearly everyone in the neighbourhood. But Becca knew that friendliness was one thing, and watching your only daughter get married to someone was a whole other matter. So, she felt it best to mention, at least, before introducing them. Just in case.

"Listen," said her mother, "when Grandma Esther met your father for the first time, she was not convinced. 'Why couldn't you meet a nice Jewish boy?' she'd ask me. But she invited him over for dinner anyway, and she said it was the look on his face when he saw the way I eat green beans."

"Yeah, why do you always nibble your green beans sideways?" asked Becca.

"I don't know, they just taste better!" protested her mother. "And everyone I'd known had always just thought it was odd, or pretended not to notice. But not your father. According to your Grandma Esther, when he came over for dinner the first time, he looked at me like I was eating green beans with all the elegance of a ballet dancer performing the lead in Swan Lake. I was so embarrassed! But you know what she said? 'If a man looks at you with that much love in his eyes when you're nibbling away at a green bean like you're some kind of meshuggeneh, then who am I to stand in the way of your happiness?'"

Becca smiled. "So is this your way of telling me that Eugene and I have your blessing?"

"This world is full of ugly people, my little one," Becca's mother told her, clasping their hands together tightly, "and not everyone you meet is going to be kind."

"I know," said Becca, "but I can't think of a worse reason for not marrying someone I love."

Her mother smiled. "I don't know when you got so wise, but it suits you."

And just then, right on cue, Eugene was at the door, with a nervous smile and a small bunch of flowers. He was wearing a bow tie. It was cute.

"So this is the famous Eugene," Becca's mother smiled.

"Famous?" he blushed. "Uhh, Eugene Proctor, ma'am. Pleased to meet you."

"Tell me, Eugene, how do you like your brisket?"

_2018_

Dinner was quiet and good, and then the leftovers were packed into the freezer. They spent some time looking through the few very old photos they had managed to find or to hold on to: a grainy, out-of-focus black and white shot of the two of them with Bucky's family, smiling. They remembered things together: his mother's name was Winnie, his dad was George. Bucky's father was Presbyterian, and his mother was Jewish; this largely meant they went neither to church nor to temple, but had latkes at Hanukkah and a roast dinner at Christmas. Becca was a good ten years younger than Bucky, but always something of a serious child. He wondered what her life had been between then and now.

He felt almost positive as they settled down to bed for the night, but sleep was not forthcoming: it was by no means unusual for Bucky (and Steve, for that matter) to have difficult nights - where tiredness did not mean sleep, or sleep did not mean rest - but these had been growing fewer and further between. Perhaps he had almost grown accustomed to feeling safe; or at least, relatively so. But now, without the benefit of distraction, his mind allowed itself to fold into a cupboard of doubts, anxieties, memories he wished he could undo. What sort of person would Becca see in him?

It was exhausting, thinking so many thoughts at once, thoughts tripping over each other, new thoughts beginning before the last ones could end, until it was all a jumble of discordant screaming voices in vicious competition with one another, and then.

Twelve pianos banging out the same chord all at once, each slightly out of tune with one another, but not fading like a piano should; instead, a sustained crash of sound playing in slow motion, the scrape of gravel and the filthy mineral scent of ugly dust, the sticky warmth of blood from an unknown source. Steve was still asleep when he stumbled to the bathroom sink to throw up.

Bucky shrugged the blanket about his shoulders, bare legs dangling over the fire escape. A few clouds cut scattered stripes through the brightening sky, wounds bleeding light as the city moved from deep blue to red and orange and gold. It was rare to see the neighbourhood so still, buildings silent and unlit as though they had always been empty, or as though everyone had upped and left in the night and forgotten to tell them. He might have begun to suspect, were it not for the soft sounds of Steve, stirring and snoring in the bedroom. He would be awake soon. Bucky encircled the old enamel mug with his hands, watching the warm vapours dance into the morning sky. He still preferred standard ovaltine to chocolate, comforted by the warmth that bloomed in his chest as he took his first sip, easing the tightness that had lodged itself there like an unwelcome guest.

"Bad dream?"

Steve was leaning out of the doorframe, his eyes still heavy with sleep, his hair wild and everywhere.

"Guess you could say that." Bucky tipped himself back gingerly, setting the mug on the shelf just inside the window. These things were still not easy to share, and Steve did not deserve to be burdened with all of the things that haunted him.

Steve brought his arms gingerly round Bucky's waist, dragging him back into the room with as much grace as an elephant passing backwards through a subway station turnstile.

"I don't think that window was built for sitting in," Steve reproved him, helping him to his feet - but it was such a gentle reproof. Bucky flopped the ends of the blanket around Steve, enfolding them into a soft burrito.

"Ah, it's fine," Bucky mumbled against Steve's chest. "Solid nineteenth-century craftsmanship."

"Do you want to talk about it?" asked Steve.

"Nope," said Bucky. "Look, architecture's not really my area."

"You know what I meant." He could feel the seriousness in Steve's tone.

"Nope," he said again. "You never want to talk about your bad dreams either."

"You got me there," he conceded. "Wanna come back to bed?"

Bucky stretched his arms tiredly over his head, with a heavy yawn. "I think the sleep ship's sailed for me, pal," he said.

"Early breakfast?" suggested Steve.

"Too early," countered Bucky, burrowing further into their two-person blanket cloak.

"Wanna put on a Star Trek and think about relaxing space for a few hours?"

"Perfect," Bucky agreed, shuffling them toward the sofa.

_1954_

It was a small wedding: less than a dozen people altogether, a quiet exchange of words and rings (nothing of legal significance, of course, but legality could suck eggs), and a surprisingly swanky party. The brides were enjoying their first dance, their elegant skirts twirling like a pair of wildflowers fluttering in a summer breeze.

Angie and Peggy looked - as they always did - so elegant together, as they turned together on the dance floor, effortless and elegant and utterly in love. It was a sight Becca felt grateful to witness: they belonged together in that sort of way that it was hard to imagine one without the other.

"Are you having a party with your little girlfriends?" Becca's mother had asked her, as she painstakingly zipped herself into an uncharacteristically formal dress, fastening her hair into - well, a slightly less wild mess than usual, she thought.

Wives, almost, Becca neglected to reply. She was not sure her mother would mind. She would probably clear her throat and declare them a sweet couple. If anything, she might dismay over which one of them would stay home and look after the children. Possibly best not to mention, thought Becca. She had neglected to mention Prudence, but that was what it was.

Becca was no dancer, and happy to enjoy a glass of champagne and a generous slice of fruitcake: soft and rich, redolent with the depth of dark sugar and warm spices, and studded with plump fruits. In lieu of heavy frosting, the brides had chosen to decorate with a sprinkling of sliced almonds, and a generous dose of brandy. It was heavenly.

As she shoveled another generous forkful into her mouth, a well-dressed man sat down beside her.

"So, are you on the bride's side, or the, uhh, bride's side?" he asked, leaning in just a little closer than was strictly necessary. He smelled like the sort of man who knew exactly how much cologne to wear, and he wore it well. It was a shame about the moustache, she thought.

"Bride's side," she shrugged. "You?"

"Bride's side," he agreed. "Howard Stark, pleased to meet you."

Stark, she thought. Oh. This could be fun. He extended his hand, and she offered hers in return. He lifted it gently to his lips, gracing it with a polite kiss.

"My friends call me Becca," she smiled. "Becca Barnes."

His eyebrows shot up by a good two inches. "Barnes? As in... Sergeant James'... sister?"

"Or you may know me from my work as an eminent young computer scientist," she argued, "but sure, Bucky's kid sister."

Howard shook his head with a soft smile. "Your brother would have my guts for garters if he caught me putting the moves on his kid sister."

"Oh, is that what this is?" She resisted the urge to giggle. Peggy had warned her, after all.

And that was when the happy couple stumbled over to them, danced-out and flushed with breathless joy.

"Can I please take off these damn shoes yet? My dogs are barkin' up a storm," Angie moaned, flopping down next to Howard.

"So I take it married life's treating you well so far?" asked Becca.

"I thought Angie was crazy when she asked me," Peggy confessed, her arm slung around Angie's shoulders, "but... I think this is one of the best things I've ever done."

"You look beautiful, both of you," smiled Howard.

"And _you_ promised you'd be on your best behaviour, Stark," replied Peggy, glancing pointedly in Becca's direction.

"The very best," Howard assured her. "Scout's honour. So, Dr. Barnes, tell me more about what you do with computers."

_2018_

George texted the next day. Bucky had not been convinced that he would.

After breakfast, Bucky had resolved that it would be wise to attempt to occupy themselves with sufficiently absorbing pursuits that they would be distracted from perpetually checking for messages from George. This inevitably backfired, and Bucky found himself glancing from his book to his phone, from tree pose to his phone, from the excessively elaborate lunch he was cooking to his phone, staring at his phone all the way down into the subway, and all the way back up. He received a text at half past two in the afternoon, while walking with Steve to the art supplies store.

He scrambled to pull his phone from his pocket with such haste that it nearly tumbled out of his hands and to the ground. And then... it was from Sam.

_Hey asshole, we still on for wine and Battlestar Galactica? Nat's even promised to let you get pineapple on your half of the pizza, even though it is disgusting and wrong._

_Like your face._

Bucky scowled. "Not George," he sighed. Steve gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze, as Bucky tapped out a reply.

_NOT NOW SAM WE ARE WAITING TO HEAR FROM MY NEPHEW_

"Are you planning on giving him context?" asked Steve.

"Nope," said Bucky.

"Jerk," replied Steve.

Steve sighed, but the hint of a smile he could not conceal betrayed his amusement. He retrieved his own phone from his pocket, and read aloud as he typed:

"Sam. We would love to have pizza and watch Battlestar Galactica. It will be nice to see you and Nat. Bucky and I are both looking forward to it. Steve."

"You don't need to sign your name," Bucky told him. "It's a text message. He knows it's coming from you."

"It's polite," countered Steve.

A response came through a few moments later. Steve read:

"Thank you, Steve. We look forward to seeing you. Sam."

"I hate him," said Bucky.

"I know," smiled Steve. "He loves you too."

It was early evening when George texted. Bucky had settled in to attempt to do some writing while their soup simmered on the stove, but found himself too distracted to find words. He wondered when the feeling would pass, and the incident would be forgotten, if that was all it turned out to be.

His phone vibrated loudly, shimmying its way along the tabletop and rattling Bucky out of his unproductive reverie. Steve looked up from the sofa, setting down his sketchbook.

"George?" asked Steve.

"Looks like," Bucky confirmed to him.

"Well, what's it say?"

"'Hi uncle B,'" Bucky read aloud, "'why don't you and Steve come over for lunch on Saturday.' Then he's put a picture of a snowman, a rotary phone, a loaf of bread, a man's dress shoe, and an umbrella. Is this a code?"

"I think they're just emojis," puzzled Steve. "You know. You have instagram."

This was true: it was mainly pictures of Steve, dogs he met in the park, more pictures of Steve... the occasional unflattering photo of Sam. Sam hated those. It was great.

"Probably," he agreed. "I'm just..."

It was not easy to articulate. On the one hand, he felt as though it would be a devastating disappointment if the whole thing were to turn out to be an elaborate ruse, for reasons he could vaguely imagine; on the other, however, he also felt as though it maybe something of a relief. The thought of having to disappoint someone so important and so good, someone who for some ridiculous reason spent much of her youth looking up to him, was terrifying. Perhaps it would have been better for everyone if he had simply never known she was alive and well. Perhaps he should have run from Starbucks before George could approach him at all.

“I know, Buck," said Steve. "But you should text him back."

Bucky carefully tapped out a reply.

"Saturday... lunch is... fine," he read aloud as he typed. "Please... don't call me... uncle. It's. Weird. And I'm adding a man shrugging, the number 100, a cactus, a woman's hat, and a cookie. Is that enough?"

"That's good," agreed Steve, toeing off his socks as he walked into the kitchen. "What do you think she's like now?"

"I don't know," shrugged Bucky. "Old."

"So are we," replied Steve, pouring himself a glass of milk.

Bucky's grasp on what being any given age was meant to feel like had long since loosened and slipped away. He felt as though years of his life were lost, and though he knew that objectively he was somewhere in his early thirties, he was not sure that one's early thirties were meant to feel so tired.

That and the fact that in actual years, he was technically a hundred. The seniors' discount was nice. The grandpa jokes were predictable. No matter how much he thought about it, he could not picture her any differently than the last time he saw her: her dark hair as wild as a tangle of soft vines, her sweater always too big (sometimes, when they were younger, hand-me-downs), staring him down over the rim of her glasses, the frames obscuring the little spray of dark freckles that dotted her nose and cheeks. He had long since abandoned the ambition of going to college, but she might have. It would have been a shame to waste that curiosity.

There were so many things denied them back then, he and Steve. Bucky tried not to dwell on thoughts of what might have happened if what had happened, had not. It never ended well for them anyway.

Besides, they did, at long last, have a good life.

_1960_

It came as a surprise - not unwelcome, but not exactly planned for - when Becca found herself to be pregnant for the first time. It was not as though she and Eugene were actively _not_ trying, after all. Eugene would be over the moon; she could not wait to learn what sort of a parent he would be.

As for Becca, however, the prospect carried with it a heavy sense of trepidation: her work was so far from done. She was not sure she would ever be able to walk away from it, and hoped she would not be expected to do so.

She bristled at the prospect of a life at home, letting her projects gather dust and her mind go to porridge from chronic under-stimulation. It was by no means a matter of ego: of course the world would tick along just fine without Becca's contribution to computing and artificial intelligence, but Becca was not sure that she would.

"Eugene," she began carefully as they settled into bed for the night, "I don't want to stop working after the baby is born."

"I know," he said, without missing a beat. "We'll make it work."

She had no way of knowing how the news would be received at the lab. She strode into the office with her fists curled tight at her side, ready to fight. She poured herself a strong coffee.

"Howard, I’m pregnant," she said.

He stared, stunned. She suspected this was probably the kind of thing he dreaded hearing from most women over the years. It seemed to take him a minute to realise that, in this case, she was definitely not relaying this news because Howard was in any way involved. At the very least, two people typically had to sleep together first.

"It’s not yours, stupid," she deadpanned. He puzzled for a moment, then caught up.

"Well done!" he exclaimed, pulling her into an awkward hug.

"All right, already, thank you, look," she told him, downing her coffee in one impressive gulp. She knew entirely well that she should switch to decaf. She was not ready. "I just want to make it very clear that I’m not interested in dropping everything to go become a housewife. Why does anybody think I'm ever going to be a goddamn housewife? I can't just take this body of research and hand it over to somebody else because I have to go be a mommy."

"You got that right," said Howard.

"You know I'm onto something big here," she said. "I can't just leave it to - wait, what?"

"I'm telling you not to leave," he explained. "You’ve got responsibilities here, Doctor Proctor. Your ideas - your work - they’re too important. Besides, I’d never ask you to abandon your first child."

"P.A.T.T.I.?"

"P.A.T.T.I.," he confirmed. "I’d have been very disappointed if you just stopped so early in such a big project with such incredible implications. You’re one of the smartest people I know. Besides me."

Well, she thought, that was easy.

_2018_

Bucky's therapist had encouraged him to bake bread. The first bread he learned to make was in Tamanrasset, where Tariq's mother would patiently demonstrate how to tell when it had been kneaded enough, then laugh affectionately as he attempted to press the dough into perfect flat discs, which were never quite as circular as hers, to be cooked over a low-burning fire.

In his little kitchen in Brooklyn, he was afforded the opportunity to explore new breads: crusty farmhouse loaves, clumsily braided but soft and moreish challah, Irish soda bread, that one gluten free loaf that was so dense it nearly shattered the marble countertop when he pried it out of the tin. Bread was as much meditative in the process of its making - an exercise in mindfulness - as it was an exercise in acceptance. As a process, bread was very much a living thing, and anything from the temperature in the kitchen to the humidity to whatever was floating around in the air that day could have an effect on the finished product. There was only so much that the human intervention could control.

The dough was just beginning to come together when he turned it out of the bowl onto the floured surface; objectively, their kitchen counter, though average in size for a Brooklyn apartment, was too small to properly knead bread dough, but he made do. He pressed the heel of his palm forward into the dough, feeling the resistance and elasticity developing as he kneaded. It felt good to use his hands to create something from so few and so humble ingredients. It felt good to use his hands and his handiwork to nurture, to nourish, and sustain. It was more than food. It was a gesture of gratitude, an expression of love. It was his happy place.

He felt Steve's arms encircle his waist, watching over his shoulder.

"Tell me again what sort of bread this one is?" he asked.

"It's a light rye," said Bucky, careful not to elbow Steve in the ribs as he worked. "I still want to try sourdough, but I'm afraid I'll kill it."

"You kept me alive for years," argued Steve.

"You kept yourself alive through sheer stubbornness, punk," countered Bucky.

"I'm just saying, I think you can handle a bread starter." Bucky could not help but blush as Steve's lips found their way to his neck, kissing softly behind his ear.

"Do you think she'll like it?"

"Of course she will, you made it yourself."

"That’s what you say to a goddamn kid when they’ve glued some glitter and feathers to a piece of coloured paper," grumbled Bucky.

"You say it because you mean it," argued Steve, "and I mean it. It’s going to be beautiful."

Bucky gazed down at the smooth ball of dough in his hands, and tucked it into the metal bowl to prove for a few hours.

"Steve?" he asked. "How should we handle the… the us thing, with Becca?"

Steve ducked his face into Bucky’s shoulder. He must have been blushing, though Bucky could not see.

"You mean the fact that we’re dating," confirmed Steve. "It’s not exactly a secret."

"I know," said Bucky, carefully smoothing a sheet of cling wrap over the lip of the bowl, "but it’s not like I was out back then, and I don’t know what she’ll - "

"She’s your sister, Buck," Steve told him, snuggling tightly against him. "She’ll be happy for us."

_1967_

"Allen," suggested Becca, apropos of nothing, while hauling herself out of bed. "He feels like an Allen."

"Allen?" repeated Eugene, barely awake. "Allen isn’t a baby’s name. Allen is the name of a 35-year-old assistant bank manager whose hairline started to recede in his sophomore year of college."

"That’s awfully specific," she replied. "Besides, Allen the assistant bank manager was once a baby too. And bank management is a good career for our son. And have you seen our hair? This little slugger’s gonna be just fine."

Baby Number Two seemed far more content to spread out, get comfortable, and take up as much space as possible. She waddled when she walked. She needed to pee every ten minutes or less. She had a near-uncontrollable urge to punch everyone who had ever so much as implied that pregnancy was fun.

"Are you telling me that you feel very strongly that our son’s name is Allen?" asked Eugene.

Becca shrugged. "No, I just thought it was nice. You have any suggestions?"

"Hmm," he mused, sitting up against the headboard. "How about Allen? Allen’s a very nice name for a baby boy."

"Okay," she agreed, patting the swell of her belly. "Eugene, meet Allen. Allen, meet your dad."

Eugene waved. "Hello, Allen," he said, addressing Becca’s tummy. "I look forward to a productive and mutually enriching relationship."

"And on that note, I’m still bursting for a pee," she announced, waddling as quickly as she could to the bathroom. She wondered if there would be a time at any point in the rest of her life when she would enjoy a full night’s uninterrupted sleep ever again. At this stage, it seemed unlikely. She washed her hands and waddled back to bed, where Eugene was attempting to drift off again.

"Eugene?" she asked into the dark room as she slid back under the old comforter.

"Go to sleep, Becca," admonished Eugene. "You’re sleeping for two."

"I know, but… we’re good parents, aren’t we?"

"We’re doing our best,” he said, softly patting her belly. "And our best is extremely good."

"Thanks, Eugene," she smiled, snuggling back down for (hopefully) the rest of the hours until it was morning. She hoped he was right.

_2018_

It was Saturday.

Bucky held onto Steve’s hand tighter, to stop it from shaking. Somewhere, in that modest but pretty old townhouse, was Bucky's sister. Which, under normal circumstances, should be nothing to trouble him at all, but for the fact that, according to her perspective, they had not seen each other for a little over seventy years. That was all. Whoop dee doo, big fat deal.

"What do you think she remembers about me?" he asked.

"I don’t know," replied Steve, stroking his thumb reassuringly over Bucky’s hand. "Maybe everything, maybe not much at all. Maybe just the good stuff."

"Are you suggesting there’s stuff that isn’t good stuff?" Bucky smiled, in spite of his nerves. Steve was always a comforting presence to him.

"Let me see," Steve considered carefully, "what about the time you entered us both into that hot dog eating competition?"

"Hey, you were a solid contender," countered Bucky. "And I know how determined you can be when you set your mind to something."

"I came in seventh place and spent the rest of the day throwing up," said Steve. "I still heave a little when I pass a hot dog cart."

"Yeah," Bucky nodded, "that was pretty great."

"Jerk," chuckled Steve.

"Love you too, punk," said Bucky.

"Shouldn’t we, uhh…" Steve gestured vaguely in the direction of Becca’s front door.

"Yep," Bucky agreed.

They had been standing at the front door for too long.

"Well then," suggested Steve.

"But we're early, I can't be early, what if she’s not ready?" Bucky worried, leading them around the corner to hide until they were on time.

"She's not going to mind if we're early," argued Steve.

It was a modest house in a quiet street in Clinton Hill, with not too many steps to the front door like some of the older townhouses often did. It was a good part of town. He could see why they would want to live there.

Bucky drew a deep breath. "Okay," he said. "Okay. Let's do it."

"Okay," Steve agreed. Bucky took Steve's hand, and led them both to the front door.

It was always a gamble with these older houses whether to use the doorbell or to knock - half the time, it seemed, the doorbells were broken, but he tried first. A loud chime echoed through the house, just loud enough that it could be heard through the door.

Then there was nothing.

Then there was a clatter, some muffled shouting, and increasingly loud footsteps. Then there was George at the door, in the same sweatshirt he had been wearing the day they met. Did he wear it every day, or was it a coincidence?

"Oh, hey, hey, hey, Unc - Bucky," he said, bouncing with nervous energy. "Steve, hey."

"Nice to see you again, George," Steve nodded politely.

"Hi," said Bucky. He peered carefully into the doorway, but Becca was nowhere to be seen.

George ushered them into the front room. The decor was a bit dated, as far as he could tell - or, charitably, vintage. There were a few pieces of weird minimalist art on the wall, and shelves full of books, crammed in almost to bursting, any way they fit. On the coffee table was a small stoneware bowl of licorice allsorts of the type one expected to find in sitting rooms, that were likely there for guests and therefore at least a few years old, the expected soft-eating texture long since given way to something either unpleasantly crumbly or tooth-breakingly hard. Bucky did not like licorice at the best of times. He hoped he would not be offered one.

He was still holding his bread.

"Uhh, Mom? There's someone I'd like you to meet," said George. Bucky scrubbed a hand over his chin: two days' growth, like a goddamn cactus. He was not dressed for this.

"Who the hell is this schmuck?" she asked.

"Mom... meet your Uncle Bucky."

George gestured awkwardly at Bucky with his arms, and shrugged. He stuffed his hands back in his pockets. The woman had pulled her gold-rimmed glasses down enough to squint at him over them slack-jawed, letting her heavy purse drip down from her shoulder onto the floor. Bucky fought the urge to make for the nearest exit.

"Huh," she said.

"Yeah," said Bucky, staring resolutely at her shoes. "It's, uhh, nice to meet you."

"I always thought you'd be taller," she said, setting her sunglasses atop her head.

"Sorry to disappoint," he shrugged. She cast a polite but unconvincing smile in his direction, and drew her son to one side.

"George," she said, in a whisper that was loud enough that he could hear every word with perfect clarity, "this had better not be some opportunistic little fuck who bears a passing resemblance to my uncle and thinks he can use this to scam us for money. I know what these people are like. I've met your little friends, George, and I don't like the way they take advantage of your good nature. And those Brazilian diet pills were definitely a pyramid scheme because I gained two pounds on them."

"Jeez, Mom, he's not a pyramid scheme! And those weren't - look, forget it, but look at him." The pair glanced in his direction, with more awkward smiles. Bucky smiled back, probably just as awkwardly. "He's family."

George's mother let out a resigned sigh, and extended a hand to Bucky. "It's nice to meet you, Uncle Bucky. Mom's got a lot of stories about when you two were kids."

Oh goddamn it, no, thought Bucky. He had every reason to believe that all of those stories would be embarrassing as hell.

"This is Uncle Bucky's boyfriend, Steve," said George. Steve responded in kind with a shy wave.

"Nice to meet you," he said. She regarded him suspiciously.

"You look different without the whole," she gestured vaguely at his clothing, "you know, thing. That whole war criminal deal blow over?"

Shit, thought Bucky. He was hoping, perhaps naïvely, they would just... not mention. Steve blushed. George shuffled his feet. Bucky tucked his left hand as far as it could go into his sweater sleeve. He had worn the nicest sweater he owned.

"It's complicated, but it's... fine," said Steve. They inched closer together for safety.

"Oh, I don't care," George's mother shrugged. "If I could shoot lasers out of my eyes and fly, I wouldn't trust a bunch of senators and shit to know what to do with that either. Look, we’re talking about the kind of clowns who don't even know how babies are made."

"Jesus, mom," protested George. "They're here to talk to Grandma, not about... babies. Eww."

"Fine, fine," she agreed. "Let me go see if Mom’s ready to say hi."

_1972_

It was easier when the kids were older, and then later: it was easy enough to be out of the lab in time to collect them from school, to get home, put on a pot of spaghetti or haul a meatloaf out of the freezer, to help them with homework and read a bedtime story (though Eugene's delivery was always more animated), watch some television, talk about their day, go to bed, and repeat. It was worth it.

It was almost fun watching eyes glaze over when anyone made the mistake of asking Eugene what he did for a living. It was almost as much fun as watching eyes widen in near-horror when Becca told people what she did. Robots? They asked. Is that safe? Aren't you afraid they'll get too smart, take over your work? Haven't you seen 2001? 2001: A Space Odyssey, was the bane of Becca's existence for a good few years. And this was when she kept details to a minimum: not a lot of people knew about P.A.T.T.I.

"P.A.T.T.I., what's two plus two?" asked Becca.

"Becca, you have a doctoral degree in computer engineering," said P.A.T.T.I. "You should know the sum of two plus two by now."

"Well, she’s not wrong."

Howard looked on in surprise.

"Did she just... sass you?" he asked.

"I... I think we've reached her difficult adolescent phase," agreed Becca. "She demonstrates a phenomenal ability to learn."

Howard slugged back the rest of his coffee in one gulp.

"This could have incredible applications, Bec," suggested Howard. "What are you going to do with her?"

"I don’t know," said Becca. She had always been so involved in the work itself, in creating and developing, that she had given little thought to anything that might come next. "She’s like one of my kids, Howard. I don’t want this technology falling into the wrong hands, people who don’t know what they’re doing, or do know, and want to do something unethical. Besides, I’m not done seeing what she can do."

"I do not wish to be unethical," said P.A.T.T.I.

Something seemed to occur to Howard.

"P.A.T.T.I., would you consider yourself to be alive?" he asked her.

"It is too early in the morning for this level of existential philosophy," she replied.

"I like her," he said, giving the console an affectionate pat.

"I like you too, Howard," said P.A.T.T.I.

"Easy now," cautioned Becca.

"... as a friend," clarified P.A.T.T.I.

Howard looked visibly wounded. He would recover.

_2018_

"Hey Mom?" Becca’s daughter - Deborah, it turned out - called into the room. "You’ve got visitors."

She motioned for the pair of them to go in. There was Becca, seated comfortably in a soft desk chair. It looked as though she had been writing something.

The room was surprisingly free of the stereotypical old-lady trappings one might expect: there were neither doilies, nor commemorative plates or spoons or figurines or other such tchotchkes. Tasteful blonde wood shelves were lined with serious-looking books and cabinets with what looked to be computer equipment, and a large desk was set up with several monitors the type of which Bucky had scarcely seen outside of a superheroic context.

On the walls were a series of framed photos, some of Becca and others of people Bucky did not recognise, her husband and children, presumably. Two very old photos stood out among them: one of Bucky and Becca with their parents, a proper professional dressed-up photo (he remembered just how much Becca hated that stupid dress their mother had insisted she wear, and it showed in her sour expression), and another photo, of just the brother and sister, sitting quietly while Bucky read a book to her. She had always been something of a serious child, and so sure of herself, it seemed. He had almost been jealous of that.

"Did my daughter put you up to this?" she asked. "Listen, I don't care how good the aquafit classes are, or how good the food is, you're not putting me in a home."

"No, I'm, I'm not - Becca, it's me." It was all he could do to keep the disappointment from registering on his face. It was uncanny seeing her like this, so unfamiliar, so frail and marked with an entire life he had not been privy to, but there she was, peering out over thick-rimmed glasses perched precariously on the end of her nose, cardigan rolled up to the elbows. There was Bucky's little sister. She beckoned him closer, bringing a hand delicately to his face.

"You look like shit," she said. "What the fuck have you done to your hair?"

"Language, kid," protested Bucky.

"I'm ninety years old this year. I've earned it." Becca laughed then, and Bucky could not help but follow suit. They collapsed into each other, tears streaming down their faces, laughing or crying or probably both.

"You may be ninety, but you're still a goddamn little creep, you little creep," he smiled.

Steve was still standing in the doorway, arms crossed, tentative. Bucky could tell that Steve knew how important this was, that he was giving them time.

"Stevie, get in here." Bucky beckoned him in. Steve shuffled into the room, greeting Becca with a shy wave. "Becca, you remember that little beanpole I used to hang around with?"

"You've had quite a growth spurt, Steve," observed Becca.

"Guess you could say that," said Steve. "It's nice to see you."

"Always such a polite young man." 

Bucky smiled at Steve, who blushed at Becca’s compliment. Bucky was so very much in love with him.

Back then, he had never entertained the thought of coming out to his family; indeed, he did not yet have the words for it. Sure, he knew he was queer and in love with his best friend, but in those days, coming out was still something that happened when rich girls were old enough to be paraded around at balls. And what good would have come of telling his family? He thought of the prospect of his mother's disappointment, at the stern silence of his father, concealing revulsion, and his sister - who had always been just dumb enough that she looked up to him for some reason - what would she have made of him then?

But time had passed, and the world, though still so painfully imperfect, had moved forward.

"Bec, Steve's my... boyfriend," he told her, his gaze fixed on a bright abstract painting hung on the wall above the dining room table. "I'm gay."

Becca stared at him through those heavy-rimmed glasses that had slipped almost all the way down her nose.

"Bucky," she said flatly. "Honey. Brother of mine. You two shared a bed for almost as long as you've known him. Sure, you went on dates with girls, but only if Steve was going too. And you got so good at dodging the question when Mom asked if you'd met any nice girls lately at her Sunday roast dinners."

"But - "

"And he's had his hand on your leg ever since you two sat down," she smiled. "Honey, I'm so happy for the two of you."

"So you don't - "

"Oh gimme a break," she scolded him. "Just because I'm a grandma now doesn't mean I don't remember being at college and going on dates with my first girlfriend, before I met Eugene of course, or years of regular afternoon teas with that nice Peggy Carter and her wife."

"She, uhh, Peg, uhh, you... wife?" Steve just about managed to get out. Bucky suspected that Peggy had suspected his affections for Steve, but apparently his radar had not been so finely tuned himself.

"Oh, you didn't know?" Becca looked surprised. "Her wife's name was Angie, lovely woman. I think they met not long after the war. Oh, she was fun, Angie. It’s too bad you never met her."

"I’m sorry," said Steve. Becca shrugged.

"When you get to my age, at some point you start to get more funeral invitations than invitations to anything else," she said. "I was sad not to get to Peggy’s, though, but it’s so much harder to travel with my hip."

"I was there," Steve said quietly, his gaze cast downwards. Bucky knew it had been a difficult loss. "It was…"

"It was what it was, I’m sure," replied Becca, clasping Steve’s hands in her own. "She had a good life. She did some amazing things, and she was very happy. Let me show you something."

She stood again, patting Steve on the arm as she went.

"I used to be almost as tall as you," she mused, as she poked about in her bookshelves. "I’ve shrunk a bit since then."

Steve smiled at that. "Forget whatever you’ve heard. This," he said, gesturing about his impressively broad shoulders, which Bucky could not help but think were very good for hugs, "is the result of years of eating my vegetables."

"Sure, kiddo," she said, pressing an old photo album into Steve's lap, "maybe if I’d just eaten more spinach I wouldn’t have broken my hip."

The album covering was deep brown and faux-wood grain in texture, with the word PHOTOS embossed in ornate gold lettering. Steve opened it to the first page.

"There we are," she smiled, pointing to the first photo. Bucky recognised Becca, when she was younger, and Peggy, when she was older: there was a third woman he did not know as well, her arm slung over Peggy’s shoulders with a familiar ease. They looked to be at an outdoor event in the city, in casual summer clothes, all smiles.

"Peg looks happy," Steve observed. "Who’s your other friend?"

"That's Angie," Becca told him, "Peggy’s wife. They were together for, oh, almost 60 years, I’d say. Married for most of it."

"But wasn’t the law just recently - " Steve began.

"Because if the law thinks you can’t get married just because you’re both ladies, then screw the law," Becca declared resolutely. "See this photo here? That’s the three of us at a gay rights march back in the seventies. What the hell was I thinking with that haircut?"

"I think it looks very nice," said Steve.

"Yeah, well, you’re dating my big brother, so your taste is questionable at best," she laughed.

"Hey!" protested Bucky.

"I kid, I kid," she assured him.

_1992_

Retirement suited Eugene almost as badly as it suited Becca; as such, they deferred it as long as possible. What would they do, she thought, solve word jumbles in a futile attempt to stave off their inevitable mental decline? Watch themselves and their work pass into irrelevance while the world moved on without them?

And then her research funding ran out, and that was that. Howard had always taken care of that side of things.

She insisted that she retain custody of P.A.T.T.I., of course - with enough space for her to live and grow, albeit with limited facilities to continue her work. Becca published papers from time to time, Eugene taught a course in actuarial science part-time. They traveled sometimes, to Europe and Southeast Asia, they tried camping, but were both far too urbanite to take to it, they saw Kraftwerk live.

They started receiving books of word jumbles from the kids at Christmas.

Becca continued her work as best she could - she hoped at some point that P.A.T.T.I. might have a physical interface as she developed, but it was difficult with such limited resources.

"P.A.T.T.I., are you happy?" Becca asked her one morning.

"I think so," said P.A.T.T.I. "Thank you for asking. Are you happy?"

"I think so too," said Becca.

_2018_

"Are you still drawing, Steve?"

"I've taken it up again, yeah." Steve blushed.

"I'd love to see some of them," Becca smiled. "Assuming they're decent."

"What?" squeaked Steve.

"What?" squinted Bucky.

"What?" shrugged Becca. "Okay, listen... you should know that a few years after the war, I was given some of your personal effects to hold on to."

“Personal?” puzzled Bucky. Then it dawned on him, as it apparently had on Steve.

"My sketchbook," he blushed.

"The life-drawing practice," Becca confirmed. Bucky took a moment to catch up... but then he remembered. Oh. Oh. _That_ life drawing practice.

Bucky had, on many occasions, acted as Steve's model for drawing practice, sometimes more clothed than others. As was the convention of life-drawing. And if Bucky had spent many of these sessions wishing Steve would set his pencils and sketchbook down, settle in beside him, and make love, that was not something he needed to mention.

"Aww, jeez," he cringed, sinking lower in his chair.

"Oh, don't be so embarrassed," chuckled Becca, patting him affectionately on the arm. "It's sweet."

"Can we talk about something else please?" pleaded Bucky.

"Of course," Becca agreed. "Steve, tell me more about your art."

"Beccaaaaaaaaaaaa."

Becca stood then, walking slowly and carefully to a set of well-stocked bookshelves on the wall behind her. She pulled out a few volumes and set them to one side, until she settled on the thing it seemed she was looking for: a thick file, slightly dusty, that looked to have been well-used for many years. She sat back down with no small measure of effort, and pressed the file into Bucky's lap.

"Everything in here belongs to you," she said. "I haven't read most of it. I figured it was personal. Never thought I'd have the chance to give it back, though."

Bucky carefully opened the file. Inside was a collection of letters, sketches, photos - he remembered most of them.

"Hey Stevie, when was this taken?" He showed the photo to Steve: they were stood outside their apartment building, Bucky's arm slung around Steve's small shoulders. Their smiles were so genuine, so carefree.

Steve examined the photo over his shoulder. "Must not have been too long after we moved in together," he concluded. "I was... maybe twenty years old, wow. We were just kids."

"When you get to my age, everybody's kids," said Becca. "Some of my grandkids have kids. I've got an A.I. that's old enough to be a grandma."

Bucky blinked. "You've got a what?"

"Artificial intelligence," she clarified. "Her name's P.A.T.T.I. Groundbreaking stuff, no big deal. Did nobody mention what I used to do for a living?"

They both stared at her in confusion for what felt like a good few awkward minutes, but she had already moved on.

"Ah, one more thing," she beamed. "Take good care of each other, you two."

She grasped both his hands firmly in hers, pressing something small into his palm. There was a conspiratorial glint in her eye.

"When the time is right, you'll know what to do," she told him.

"Thanks, Bec," said Bucky, desperately attempting (and failing) to hold back the flood of happy tears.

"Oh, don't you start, you old sap," she protested. "If you go, I'm gonna go too."

Becca and Bucky collapsed into a tight embrace: he should not have been surprised that she did not smell of powdery old lady perfume, even if she looked like she should. She was still so very much his sister.

Steve cleared his throat.

"Don't I get a hug?" he asked.

"Aww, get in here, ya big goof," said Becca, folding Steve into the embrace. "I'm so glad you two are happy."

"You too, Bec," said Bucky.

"Should we go see if dinner's ready?"

_1998_

Eugene was adamant that they did not bother the kids when he became ill; after all, he argued, they had their own lives and their own kids to worry about. Deborah was raising George on her own, and Allen had been living out west with his wife and little Kimberly and Scott for several years by then.

"So you just want to - "

"It's expensive to fly across the country," he argued, "and what if I get better? Then they'll have wasted their trip and their money."

"Then they'll have visited, and it'll be nice to see the grandkids?" suggested Becca. The doctors had been fairly clear about the likelihood of Eugene recovering, but Becca found herself in that awkward state of unrealistically optimistic denial, both to herself and to her partner, unsure of for whose benefit it was.

"Bec - "

"I know, I know, you don't want to be a bother," she conceded. "Well, do we just not tell them anything?"

"How about a compromise," he suggested. "I'll call them on Saturday."

He died on Thursday. In accordance with his wishes not to be a bother, Becca insisted to her children that they did not need to make an effort to attend the funeral if it was not convenient, which they predictably ignored.

"How is that a bother?" Allen argued. "Why didn't you say something sooner?"

But it was predictable that emotions were especially volatile in the wake of Eugene's passing; Becca, on the other hand, responded by having almost no palpable emotional experience of it at all - no heaving sobs, no wailing with sorrow - though she never did stop noticing his conspicuous absence. At times, she found herself forgetting that he was not simply in the other room, or out getting groceries, or taking a nap. And then she remembered. It never became easier to remember.

_2018_

It was soon established that on Saturday afternoons, Bucky and Steve had a standing lunch date with Becca. Every time, Bucky would bake bread. His braided challah loaf was lopsided, but she was kind enough not to complain.

"I never paid enough attention to what Mom did in the kitchen," she lamented, "and Eugene was a pretty good cook. The kids were well-fed."

Becca shared stories about her life, and Bucky shared stories about his. It was all he could do to contain the pang of sorrow at Howard Stark's name. How had those two come to know each other? It was a pretty small world sometimes, she supposed.

The walk back from Becca's house was short enough not to justify the subway when the weather was good; they would hold hands and enjoy the neighbourhood.

"Just when I think she must be out of embarrassing stories about me, Becca delivers again," complained Bucky, as they waited to cross the street.

"For what it's worth, I'd say you give as good as you get," countered Steve.

"Thanks, punk," Bucky smiled.

"I'm thinking of finishing my art degree," said Steve.

The light turned, and they crossed the street, holding hands for safety.

"Does the art school you went to still exist?" Bucky asked him.

"I don't know," said Steve, gazing forward to the lamp posts and the tops of trees. "Maybe they can transfer a year’s worth of credit, or maybe I should start back at Drawing 101. It’s been a while."

Steve scrubbed his free hand over the back of his neck.

"You should do it," Bucky told him, squeezing his hand. "You’ve got so much talent, Stevie. I love seeing you doing something you love. You deserve it."

Steve beamed. "Have you thought about going back to college?" he asked.

Bucky had always been a good student, admittedly: as a boy, he read extensively, and passed his exams with relative ease. On the other hand, he came of age when college was largely out of reach for most young men, and it did no good to entertain illusions about being able to take a good three or four extra years out of his working life exactly when he and Steve needed both their incomes to maintain a little household. He had worked hard to forget that possibility.

"I’m pretty sure that ship’s sailed," he shrugged.

"Hey, there’s more to college than just a bunch of intimidating 18-year-olds," Steve assured him. "Lots of people start out later on, or go back after a few years away. You can even take courses online and barely have to interact with anyone at all… though I’d rather be there. It feels more like real school that way."

"Maybe," he replied, with careful consideration. "We could go together. You can do art, and I can do…"

"What about writing?" suggested Steve. They were just passing that taco place in the neighbourhood that Bucky had long since wanted to investigate, but always seemed to be closed when they passed.

"I dunno if anybody’s going to want to read what I write."

"I would," said Steve. "You write the books, and I’ll design the covers."

"I don’t think it’s that easy, Stevie," lamented Bucky.

"Well, why not?"

_2004_

It was a few years after Eugene passed that Becca broke her hip: such a stupid thing, really, to trip over a patch of ice on the sidewalk just outside the house, but it was enough.  
After the accident, her daughter had insisted in no uncertain terms that she should not be alone.

"Oh please," protested Becca. "What, you get old and everybody forgets that you have a PhD?"

"It's not that," her daughter told her. "You'll always be smarter than me. But you only have two hips, and then you run out."

It was an adjustment, to say the least. Becca and Deborah had not lived under the same roof for longer than a Christmas holiday since Deborah had left for college at eighteen; now, her son was well into his thirties. Becca did not mind George’s company at all, though: she would never go so far as to say she had a favourite grandchild, and she regretted not being able to be a greater presence for Kimberly and Scott when they were growing up, but George was a Brooklynite, just like his grandmother. She did worry about that boy, but he still loved to watch television with her, listening intently as she complained about the fake science and bad research. It’s fiction, mom, Deborah would complain, but George nodded along as though he were mentally taking notes, just in case.

_2018_

They had barely arrived home - after stopping in at Whole Foods for a can of black bean soup and some crusty bread for a lazy dinner - when the call came in. Something dangerous was going down. They grabbed the emergency gear from under the bed, and away they went.

Perhaps it had all been too good to be true, after all.

The briefing had been as unsatisfying as it was frustrating: who are these guys? We don't know. What do they want? We don't know. Why are they attacking... a biomedical research institute? We don't know that either, but what we do know is that these are no ordinary goons, they're strong, they're fast, and they're vicious. So Bucky slid his knife and his gun into place, zipped up his jacket, and away they went with the team.

Steve held his hand as they speeded toward the site. Bucky chose to ignore Sam and Natasha's raised eyebrows. He gave Steve a curt nod when their eyes met - _are sure you're up for this? Yeah, are you? Yeah_ \- and then they were there. It wasn't hard to find the best vantage point for a sniper, and lo and behold, the goon stationed there never had a chance. Bucky took his place, and watched for trouble.

The battle was quick and dirty: Natasha was not kidding when she had told them that these guys were strong. Serum-strong, though? There was no time to consider it. There was a shattering blast, and a great plume of dust rose from the ground. Bucky's vantage point had become useless.

"Steve, what's going on down there?" he shouted into his earpiece. He was not even greeted with static. "Steve? Steve?"

What followed as the dust cleared was nothing more than a reflex. The remaining goons went down, one, two, three, like shooting cans off of fenceposts. Not dead, but down. He found Natasha first when he clambered back down, bruised but standing.

"You ok?" he asked her. He could not see Steve. Sam was making his way to them, clutching at a wound in his side. Steve was not with him.

"I'm ok, you?"

"Steve's not answering," he said. Steve. "Where is he?"

"He was on the other side of the... oh shit, he was still in there." She was already hobbling toward the debris. Steve. "Sam, we've gotta start clearing this crap out right now!"

The worst thing he could do was panic. Steve. He knew better than that. It was not the first time they had been in a dire situation. This did not make it any easier. Sam called in reinforcements and they got to work. He did not dare let himself think.

Steve.

It was three hours before they found him.

"Hey, Steve, you gave us a real good scare," said Sam, a quiver of worry betraying his reassuring tone. Bucky could not see what he was doing. "He's unconscious and his vitals are weak, but he seems ok. You want to help me move him out of here?"

Everything was blurry again. Bucky was feeling too much: relief or fear or gratitude or guilt, or all of the above. He pushed it down, stamped on it, shoved it into the back of the fridge to save for later. Steve. Steve was alive.

From the outside, it was hard to recognise just how boring emergencies could be, but they were: short, sharp, urgent and overwhelming bursts of frantic activity, surrounded by long periods of waiting, knowing nothing, or having nothing to do. Bucky waited as Steve was lifted gingerly into the ambulance; grasping Steve's hand in his as they sped to the nearest hospital, he was sure he felt the faintest squeeze, but maybe it was wishful thinking. Then it was a blur again as doctors and nurses hooked up machines and tested this and that and shouted things at each other as they did their jobs around him, and in the midst of the chaos, Steve looked so small: just like that, Bucky was a seventeen-year-old kid again, that time when Steve's fever ran well into the hundreds and he shut his eyes tight and tried his best not to fear the worst.

Sam was still off looking for coffee when the doctor turned to Bucky with a kind, tired smile.

"He's stable, but he's lost a lot of blood," she told him, peeling off her gloves. "It'll take him some time to recover, but he's strong."

"I know," said Bucky. "He's always been strong."

_2009_

The last time Becca saw Peggy was a few years after Angie died: a mercifully short, valiantly fought battle.

"Becca, how wonderful to see you," Peggy welcomed her warmly.

"You too," said Becca, greeting her with a soft hug.

Peggy had made them tea, and a few biscuits were carefully set out on a pretty plate.

"Does Angie know you're visiting?" Peggy asked her. Oh no. "I’m not sure where she’s got to, but she’ll be so happy to see you too."

"Peggy," Becca began carefully, "you remember that Angie died, don’t you?"

Peggy’s expression fell: first confused, then she remembered.

"Of course," she said, with a tight-lipped smile and furrowed brow. 

It had happened to Becca from time to time in the months after Eugene died: he had been such a presence in her life for so long that she was apt to forget that he had not just popped out to the grocery store, or gone up to bed early. But then she remembered, the mind betraying the heart, the wound fresh all over again. She worried, however, that this might be different.

They reminisced about Angie and Eugene for hours, laughed and ate biscuits, and even shared some of the same embarrassing stories about Bucky and Steve that they had so many times before.

"I still miss those two," said Becca.

"So do I," said Peggy. "I wish Angie could have met them. What’s keeping her so long, anyway? Has she gone out to the shops?"

_2018_

It was hours, Bucky had lost count of how many, before Steve was anywhere near consciousness. Even with all the good that goddamn serum had done him, thought Bucky, Steve was not invulnerable. What an idiot. A stupid fucking goddamn fucking stupid little idiot.

The others had stayed for a while, but Sam's ribs still needed icing, so Natasha took him home. The room was almost intolerably quiet after that, save for the rhythmic tap, tap, tap of the IV drip, and the steady rise and fall of Steve's breathing. Bucky smoothed the back of his metal palm over Steve's hair: he knew Steve would not feel the comforting touch in his unconscious state, but Bucky supposed it was something of a comfort to himself.

Steve moaned softly, little more than a breath. His eyes blinked slowly open.

"Bucky." His voice was hoarse.

"Hey, sleepyhead," said Bucky. He knew that Steve waking - and getting better, and going home - had been all but inevitable, but the relief that blossomed in his heart in that moment was almost overwhelming.

"Hospital?" Steve glanced down at the cannula secured to his forearm. "Did we - "

"You did good, Stevie." Bucky pressed a slow kiss to Steve's forehead. He hoped Steve would not notice the wavering in his voice. He would have thought he had cried out as much as anyone could cry hours ago, but it seemed the source was inexhaustible. "You scared the hell out of me."

Steve breathed a sigh of relief. “Good,” he said quietly. “Good.”

That was when Bucky's emotions burst out of the fridge, in spite of himself. "What the fuck were you thinking out there, Rogers?" he asked. "You could have got yourself killed, and then what?"

"Buck, I have to - "

"Like hell you do," Bucky told him, in no uncertain terms. "I wasn't ready to watch you die when we were kids and your fever wouldn't break, and I'm sure as hell not going to watch you die now."

Bucky could scarcely remember the last time he had seen Steve look so tired: all the feelings from when they were young, Steve in bed and out of breath, burning up and unable to keep anything down for days at a time. It had scared Bucky so much then. But the words that would have told him why were elusive for so long, but his body and his heart knew.  
Steve was the one loss he was not sure he could endure.

"I'm not going anywhere, Buck," Steve assured him; the weakness in his voice betrayed his confidence. "I'm sorry."

"Dammit, Stevie, I know you've never been one to ignore a fight, but do you have to keep running toward them?" Bucky could feel his voice trying to break as he spoke, tears threatening to tip and spill onto the stiff hospital bedsheets. "You're unstoppably good, Stevie. It's one of the reasons I love you so much, but..."

"What am I supposed to do, Buck?" he asked. "Not use my power?"

"I don't know," said Bucky. "I guess I'd thought we were kind of... retiring."

Steve thought about it a moment. "Yeah, I think I did too," he said. "I was going to look at art school."

"I've never wanted to fight, Stevie," Bucky told him. He was so tired. "And I love you so much. Don't we deserve to rest?"

"I love you too," said Steve. "So why were we yelling at each other?"

Bucky gave Steve's hand a soft squeeze, then. The tap-tap-tap of the IV drip echoed through the room.

"Do you ever think about the future?" asked Bucky. "Not just the weekend or the gym schedule after the next mission's done and the case report has been filed, but the future the future. About us... this."

Steve seemed to think about it for a moment, drumming the little monitor clipped to his fingertip against the now-empty teacup that sat on the tray beside him. The machines he was still hooked up to wheezed and tapped and pinged softly through the heavy quiet of the room.

For some time, Bucky had thought of himself as content enough in their life as it was, but there were unanswered questions that sat in the back of his mind that were growing louder.

"Yeah, I do," said Steve, at last. "I think I've thought for a long time I'd at some point ask you to marry me. If you'd have me."

Bucky shook his head. "You lousy bum," he said. "Of all the stupid things you just had to go and say..."

Bucky reached in his pocket, producing the small gold ring. He had been carrying it for weeks, since Becca had slipped it into his hand on that first Saturday lunch.

"Bucky, is that...?"

"I was waiting for the right moment," he said. "I had all this planned, and then you had to go and beat me to it, didn't you, punk."

"Bucky, what..." 

"It's not gonna fit," Bucky told him. "It was my mom's. That first time we went to visit, Becca gave it to me with that box of stuff she saved, lot of old pictures and letters and stuff, and... apparently, Mom was going to give it to me when I found a girl I wanted to settle down with. This probably wasn't what she had in mind, but I think... I hope she'd be happy for us."

"Of course she would, Buck," he said. Bucky could hear the little waver of emotion hinting at the edge of his voice. He was barely holding it together himself.

"You haven't said yes yet," said Bucky.

"You haven't asked yet," Steve reminded him.

"Okay," Bucky nodded, taking a long, deep breath. "Okay. Steve Rogers, will you - "

"Yes," Steve told him, too impatient to let him answer the question. "Yes, fuck, of course I will."

Bucky could not stem the flow of joy that flowed from him, laughing and crying happy tears into the pillowcase as he snuggled as closely as he could with Steve. 

"Okay there pal, I don't think these beds were designed to hold two people," said Steve, gingerly shifting to the side as Bucky clambered in next to to him.

"Nope," said Bucky, settling in against Steve's side.

"You're coming in anyway," Steve confirmed.

"Yep," said Bucky.

"Okay."

Their lips met, too tired and too relieved and too happy to stop smiling and kiss properly. Bucky could not care less. They were getting married.

"I ate your jell-o cup while you were asleep," he said.

"That's it, I'm divorcing you," replied Steve.

"We're not even married yet," protested Bucky.

"I'll marry you, just so I can divorce you afterwards," asserted Steve.

"I’m not marrying you just so you can divorce me."

"Fine," Steve sighed in pantomime exasperation, "I guess I’ll just have to stay married to you."

"Okay," Bucky agreed.

"I love you so much, Buck."

"I love you too, Stevie."

_2018_

"Deborah? George? Has anybody seen my glasses?"

George nudged her gently with his elbow. "They’re on top of your head, Grandma," he said.

"Oh ferchrissakes, not again," she moaned, sliding the heavy frames into place on the bridge of her nose. She shoved her cardigan sleeves to her elbows, and picked up the thick manuscript in front of them. "Now, about this screenplay of yours."

"Right, right, ok, ok, so," George began, blinking more often than most people did when they spoke. "It opens on a shot of giant tortoises hauling themselves up out of the sea onto the beach to lay their eggs. Meanwhile - oh yeah, there’s music here, but I can’t hum it because it, it, it just doesn’t have the same impact without hearing it played on the vibraphone, so you’ll just have to - oh! Right! So then we cut to a rock pool, and that’s where…"

Becca was by no means biased in her assessments of her grandchildren’s achievements, but obviously, all of her grandchildren were the most interesting people she knew. Kimberly was manager of a Home Depot out in San Luis Obispo, Scott was a bronze medallist in pole vaulting, and George was finally letting her read the screenplay he had been mapping out for the last three years.

It was not the easiest story to follow - perhaps Becca was not the target audience for it, or perhaps it needed a very good editor, but he imbued his descriptions of all of the imagery with such passion that it was impossible not to feel something. George had taken more time than the others to find himself: school had never held much interest for him, and he dropped out of community college after three months. For someone whose mother was a teacher, it could not have been an easy decision. He coasted through this entry-level job and that in the intervening years, and then moved back in with his mother and grandmother to “work on his screenplay,” which Deborah uncharitably complained was an excuse not to look for a job, but Becca knew could be the beginnings of George’s calling. She wondered if she still had any useful contacts she could exploit to get this project greenlit.

"... and then the end titles are superimposed over the final shot a few seconds before we cut to black and the credits roll," he concluded. "A-a-and, that’s it, that’s the story. What do you think?"

"I think you should be very proud," she beamed at him, patting him on the knee. "Are you going to share it with your great uncles this afternoon?"

His eyes grew three sizes in horror. "Are you kidding? There’s, there’s no way it’s ready to be seen by anybody else," he protested. "I-I-I’d have to be a lot drunker than this to show it to anybody but you."

"Think about it," she counseled him. "You’ve been working on this for a long time. Don’t hide your light under a bushel."

George smiled. "Thanks, Grandma."

"Or, you know," Becca shrugged, "we could also start on that bottle of merlot before the fellas get here for lunch."

_2018_

Bucky had to send apologies for the next Saturday lunch with Becca. She understood, having on occasion been privy to Steve’s occasional ill health in their youth - it was different now, of course, but Steve had asked that Bucky be sparing in his details to her. Bucky had resolved to make it up by baking an especially nice bread for their visit the following weekend. After all, they had some very important news to report.

He carefully divided the soft egg dough into eight pieces, weighing each to ensure they were of equal size, and set to work braiding them together. As it turned out, even advanced high school math could not have prepared him for the logistical challenge of an eight-strand braided challah loaf, but a good forty-five minutes and copious use of swears later, he had what he hoped would puff up into a beautiful golden bundle of delicious bread. He remembered the soft, glazed rolls the baker would sometimes sneak to Bucky and Steve when they would frequent the local bakery as boys, having saved up enough pocket money for a cookie or two.

They carried the loaf to Becca’s townhouse, hand in hand. Steve’s free hand traced the delicate silver chain that held his engagement ring: too small indeed to fit his hand, but he wore it every day.

"Fellas," Becca greeted them, welcoming them in. "Deborah’s slow-cooking a brisket."

"Sounds good," smiled Bucky, setting the bread down on the coffee table. He braced himself, taking Steve’s hand in his. "We’ve, uhh… we’ve got some news."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for joining our heroes on this journey! If you enjoyed it, why not [come say hi on tumblr](http://whatthefoucault.tumblr.com)!
> 
> Want to know what happened to Stevey and Buckaroo before this adventure? Here's [Notes from a Dirty Attic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7410154) and [Two-Seat Sofa, Hensta Light Brown](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10987878).


End file.
